Skyway

In its third edition, Skyway ’11 draws the analogy between the richness of the experience that light based art delivers and wonders of the world opened up through our understanding of the Elements of the Universe.

The classical four elements – Earth, Water, Air, and Fire – are common to many philosophical traditions around the world and form powerful metaphors of forces fundamental to life on Earth. In the imagination of culture, where pagan traces never are totally dissolved, these elements refer to ancient beliefs inspired by the observation of natural phenomena.

In Western classical thought, there has been a strong conviction of the existence of four elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. A fifth element is at times added. The Greeks called it Aether. Following Aristotle’s reasoning that fire, earth, air, and water were earthly and did not provide an exact explanation for all phenomenon happening in the heavenly regions. The stars cannot be made out of any of the four elements and must therefore be made of a different, unchangeable, heavenly substance. So it is this Aether idea that links us to the Cosmos. For contemporary scientific community Aether serves as a touchstone for discussions. For us it’s an inspiring metaphor for cultural production.

The relationship with more scientifically founded categories can be probed deeper. Even today, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire are everyday symbols for the states of matter such as solid, liquid, gas. While empirical Science has arrived at new conceptions, in the field of Belief or in certain Physics tendencies these elements are still important today as a poignant metaphor for the oneness of everything.

Skyway’s 2011 artistic programme once again celebrates Human imagination in a world which is becoming more and more infinite but also more and more proximate to our reasoning, by means of contemporary science, namely astronomy, astrophysics, astrobiology. Since the stars are closer and in reaching for them again we want to understand also our own fundamental “elements” – forces and interactions ruling inside us. And of course that even if the “five elements world” is far from current knowledge about the Universe, still it can be a great contribution to an open discussion about our role in this “cold place” we used to call Cosmos.